FIG. 1 (Prior Art) is a cross-sectional diagram of a connector 1 that is connected to a printed circuit board 2 by a press fit pin 3.
FIG. 2 (Prior Art) is a cross-sectional diagram of a connector 4 that is surface-mount connected to a printed circuit board 5 by a solder tail 6 and solder 7.
FIG. 3 (Prior Art) is an exploded perspective view of a portion of a backplane connector involving a printed circuit 8 and an insulative housing 9. The printed circuit 8 is inserted to make contact with contact beam 10. Contact beam 10 is stamped out of sheet metal to form a single member that includes contact beam 10 and press fit pin 11.
FIG. 4 (Prior Art) is an exploded view of a backplane connector that is similar to the connector of FIG. 3, except that the connector of FIG. 4 has surface mount attachment structures 12 rather than press fit pins 11.
FIG. 5 (Prior Art) is an exploded perspective view of a part of a backplane connector that involves a stack of wafers 13. Each wafer includes a metal signal conductor that is stamped out of a piece of sheet metal. The press fit pins 14 are integrally formed with the metal signal conductors.
FIG. 6 (Prior Art) is an exploded perspective view of a part of a backplane connector similar to the connector of FIG. 5 except that the connector of FIG. 6 has surface mount attachment terminations 15 of the stamped metal signal conductors.
FIG. 7 (Prior Art) is a simplified cross-sectional view that illustrates a problem with current surface-mount connectors and their attachment to printed circuit boards. Due to warpage of the printed circuit board 16, some of the surface mount attachment structures 17 of the connector 18 may not contact and with solder paste 19 and therefore may not be properly soldered to the printed circuit board 16 in the reflow soldering operation.